Shepard Books

Earl B Dickerson is to the Nupes as Thurgood Marshall is to the Alphas. This a well written book that displays how another Black man (besides Dusable) had a great influence on how chicago was developed. Lawyer, Activist, millionaire, and one of the founders of my beloved "Greater" Beta chapter makes Earl B one of the most powerful black men in history. Men like this need more exposure to the masses so that more young black men will have an idol/ role model to pattern themselves after.This is a book that is not only good for black history but is also a very good history of chicago. Highly recommended!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Prominent journalist Robert J. Blakely and freelance writer Marcus Shepard present Earl B. Dickerson: A Voice for Freedom and Equality, the first ever biography of Earl B. Dickerson (1891-1986), an independent-minded African-American who spent his life struggling against racial injustice. The racial oppression in his native Mississippi forced him to flee to Chicago at age fifteen; yet Chicago was no utopia. Dickerson worked his way through preparatory schools and college, a segregated officers' training school, and law school at the University of Chicago. His distinguished career included membership in FDR's first Fair Employment Practices Committee; leadership in the movement that broke the color barrier to membership in the Illinois State Bar Association; and his driving role behind the Hansberry v. Lee U.S. Supreme Court case that brought about the beginning of the end of restrictive real estate covenants, used as a legal tool of segregation in the North. A thoroughly researched, engagingly told life story that brings to life the man behind the pitched legal battles for social progress.

Earl Dickerson is a name unknown to most civil rights activists today,but without his contributions that started nearly eighty years ago the United States would still be "a third world country" in regards to race relations.As Chicago aldermen(the First black Democrat),activist member of FDRs FEPC,member and President(1951-'54) of the progressive National Lawyers Guild(labeled "subversive" by the U.S. Attorney General and the U.S. House Un-Americans)Why is it ALL organizations that want to extend freedom,in the U.S., are labeled "RED"?Mr Dickerson(deceased 1985) was a pioneer and visionary that ALL Americans should get to know and admire.
In this excellent biography you will learn that NOT ALL opponents of expanding Civil Rights to Black Americans were Southern Demcrats(Dixiecrats), and reactionary Republicans,but also so-called "liberals",who did not hesitate to use red-baiting against the wealthy businessman(insurance and the law).In the name of anti-communism many sins have been committed by the U.S. government at home and abroad.A worthy addition to any serious student of recent U.S. history,especially anyone wanting to know more regarding the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties battles of the twentieth-century.You will also learn a lot about the ins and outs of Chicago politics,by reading this book.Gideons Army(3vol.Marzani and Munsell)by the late NU professor of Journalism Curtis MacDougal is a invaluable contribution in getting a look at Illinois,and in general,U.S.leftwing politics in the late 1940s.This book came out in the middle 1960s,it MAY still be available.The role of the U.S. Communist Party,in the Henry Wallace campaign for President in 1948,of which Mr. Dickerson was a supporter, is fully discussed by Prof.MacDougall, who also was a Wallace backer.In the '48 elections Illinois Demcrats made sure that FDRs former Vice President WAS NOT On the ballot.

This picture book deserves to have grown children searching it out for their own children for generations to come. A child asks family members what the first song was; as they answer, the pictures show their true spirits. Mothers will like it, because the mother gets the last word. This book is a small work of art.

This book is very moving and gentle. It is very comforting for a child to hear and good for reading before bedtime. Safe, comforting and loving, I highly recommend it.

This is one of those picture books where the pictures don't just reflect the story, but add an extra dimension to it. The words are more poetry than prose, and the whole effect is stunning. Although in many ways very different from The Rainbabies (same author), the two books share a timeless, fairy-tale quality that brings tears to the eyes. I think I could read this one every day and never get sick of it.

Oh you damn gorgeous beauty queen!! Now you tell finally the secret of your beauty to mankind!! A general overhaul for the whole man. The physical beginning is not bad always ;-) It was high time, at all. You already activated some ph.D. as reference, to help to bring to men (and woman). Is the book also available in German? Then out with it!! I wish you much success as a health authoress. Yours, Chris from Stuttgart, Germany

Did you know your Soul has arms and legs? And a neck and a back? And fingers and toes? A face and eyes and tongue and feet?

Most of us don't. We are trapped in the amber of age-old duality of mind vs body, feelings vs thoughts and Soul vs everything else already mentioned. Most discussions around the Soul are a variety of "Do we have one or not?" Imagine that! We are like monkeys chattering away about whether bananas grow on trees or trees grow out of bananas.

We don't just have a soul. We are one. We don't have a body, our body has us. As many of us are beginning to see, the Cartesian distinctions between various aspects of our being are not only silly, they are disorienting and harmful. They keep us in a tight, small place that is confining, constricting and deadening-often literally.

The new book, "Flexing Your Soul" by authors Jalieh Milani and Alessandra Shepard goes a long way to bring us back to our senses-all six of them! And gently and refreshingly--and with fun to boot--helps us reclaim all of who we are as human beings in a simple, step-by-step and enjoyment-filled manner.

This straightforward book brims with simple and amazing things to do with your body, not to your body. It brings exercise up out of the physical fitness category into a spiritual practice of psychic and emotional wholeness. These "Dances with Self" help us inhabit more of the 70 trillion cells that make up our presence in the physical plane.

"Wish I had the time to do something like this!" is a common response to genuine self-care. Many of the techniques to step into yourself more fully presented here take only a few moments and can be done anywhere.

Behind the step-by-step exercises outlined in easy-to-follow photographs is the astonishing liberating power of Core Energetics, founded by John Pierrakos MD. This awareness tool frees up blocked energy and feelings trapped in layers of muscular armoring and emotional defense with breath-taking ease and breath-giving results.

Core Energetics helps restore vitality, strengthens our sense of who we are (and who we are not!), restores our natural ability to feel pleasure, rejuices our chi and can activate healing of a host of ailments that are related to blocked energy and that great silent killer, stagnation.

And best of all, you can do it yourself-or with a partner, or with your kids. The movements are about as complicated as getting out of your TV chair and going to the kitchen for more chips and dip, with infinitely healthier results.

What is becoming more and more clear is that inactivity is the enemy of health--physical, emotional and spiritual. A number of recent studies have proven that exercise is often as effective as medication in giving relief from depression.

Core Energetics isn't just exercise, however. It's a way of allowing yourself to be more alive, more free, more whole than you can imagine. Jalieh and Alessandra's book is poetry for the body, a songbook for Being.

Most of us lead very busy lives that leave us breathless and tired, and yet the root cause of our fatigue is not that we do too much, but that we aren't doing what will give us the very energy and vitality we are so hungry for.

"Flexing Your Soul" is a recipe for just that-an authentic pause that refreshes body, mind, heart and Spirit by bringing us into an experience of being more alive, awake and expressive in ways that are energizing and de-Light-full.

I have been keeping Flexing Your Soul in my purse, finding it helpful to do the exercises during down-time, such as when I was waiting at a doctor's office yesterday, or while I was on a plane traveling during Thanksgiving vacation. Its exercises, at different times, have helped me by, to give some examples: 1) inspiring me to move, so that I found myself the day after reading the leg and thigh exercises portion, dancing around my kitchen using empowering movements based on the movement vocabulary from the book, 2) releasing tension when my energy had been blocked for some time, after a difficult life event from practicing the Full Body Explosion exercise), and 3) introducing me to a new level of grounding, and the enjoyment of walking and being in that state, from doing an exercise in the feet and ankles section.

Flexing Your Soul is accessible, nurturing without being
co-dependent, and has a clarity with which it expresses intuitive understanding, poses questions for reflection that can truly help people transform, in the moment, and over time, into what they want to become on all levels. I cannot review the entire book, because it has a million nooks and crannies of consciousness, with which to explore as a regular regimen, or as the spirit moves. While reading it, I have felt as if I was the kitchen with a warm, nurturing, and very clear friend. At times I felt that the author was quite intuitive, anticipating my feelings just as I was feeling them, during the exercise.

As a social worker/educator, who uses movement based expressive arts therapies, I appreciate the contribution a rich book like this can make to the field of somatic/body awareness, revealing potentialities for people enlivening various areas of their beings - enkindling passions, gently healing areas of past woundedness or limitation, and opening of more spaciousness, aliveness, embodiment and enjoyment of being - all this consciousness opening possibilities as they do easy movements that enliven their bodies. Personally and professionally, I have only begun to tap the riches of this book, Flexing Your Soul. The title says it all.

This fat but interesting book about the rise and fall of Heritage USA, Jim Bakker and his strange episodes with Jessica Hahn (among others) should serve as an excellent guide to what can happen if a single person gains too much control of an organization. What happens if that individual loses it mentally? Well, that's what is explained in concise and explicit detail by Charles Shepard, a newspaper reporter from the Charlotte Observer who covered the story of PTL's fall in the mid to late 80's.

The clear moral of the story is that if an organization's head is doing things that seem odd, don't just go ahead and do them anyway!

The book is out of print, but well worth getting if you can find it.

This book may be out of print but it's definitely worth finding and reading.

A driving, devastating indictment of the greedy "televangelists" who reached the peak of their financial powers in the 1980's and then saw it taken away from them in a series of humiliating scandals that made people question their faith...in TV preachers anyway.
I remember chatting with a book store clerk at that time and learning she was a born-again Christian. Shaking her head at the Bakker/Swaggart/Roberts scandals, she said, "The devil really won that round."
"How do you know it was the devil that brought them down?" I asked. "I have the impression that maybe God had had about enough of their shenaningans."
But that's about the extent of my stone-throwing. I end up feeling pity for these people. And feeling horrible for the millions who poured their millions into these lavish lifestyles. My great grandmother could have been referred to as one of Bakker's "Granny Grunts," the elderly ladies he always beseeched to fess up with the cash.
I could see through Bakker even as a kid and felt sorry that my great grandma couldn't. If anything, I think the PTL scandal made her realize where her real devotion should have been: on the savior mentioned in every PTL sales pitch, not the bawling, over-dressed con artists pleading for dollars for that big water slide in their amusement park.

Charles Shepard, the author and reporter for the Charlotte Observer, was the perfect person to write this book: he'd been covering Bakker for years and seeing scams and abuses up close for a long time.
Definitely worth your while to read.

This text is a fascinating detail of the rise and fall of the PTL ministry, Jim and Tammy Bakker, and Jessica Hahn. I felt that Shepard's reporting of the paper trail that eventually undid this infamous televangelist was incredbily educational and compelling. The book reads easily and is a balanced and fair account of all involved in the PTL scandal, especially those peripheral to the Bakker family themselves.

This book supplies the introductory information to a complete unit in life science. It demonstrates how a tree is used in nature.

This lovely picture book is a wonderful tool for teachers and environmental educators, such as myself, to use to help students see the ecological processes going on all around them. The story follows the life and death of a tree, and shows how the tree contributes to the ecosystem even long after death, as a home for animals -- different animals as it passes through different stages of decay -- and enrichment for the soil. I read this story to my outdoor school students (5th-6th grade), even though it is meant for younger children, then send them out to explore a rotting log. It is an eye-opening experience for many of them! This is a very sweet, simple story illustrating the cycle of life and death in an ecosystem. Enjoy!

I couldn't believe this book hadn't been reviewed more than once, so I had to write in. We just got this from the library, and believe me, we'll be purchasing our own copy very soon, as well as checking out other books by this author. There are only one or two short paragraphs per page, so there's not too much text for my three-year-old, but it's written so poetically that we can talk about the meanings of new words. I can easily see older children enjoying this book as well. Or I can just ad-lib the story by pointing to the beautiful illustrations that show how the various forest flora and fauna benefit from the dead wood and help reduce it to rich forest loam. It's a great story that shows the cycle of nature, the seasons, forest ecology, decomposition -- all in a poetic and beautifully illustrated book that a three year old can easily grasp, and which I know will be a favorite of my daughter's for years to come.

Never having heard of Lucius Shepard, I bought a used paperback copy of "Green Eyes" on the strength of its unusual back-cover plot synopsis and the fact that it could be had for 50 cents...a somewhat ordinary procedure of mine for reasons I'll not go into. In other words, I approached this novel with very little in the way of expectations and, perhaps for that very reason, was simply amazed at my good fortune. This story, itself one that does not easily fit into any genre niche, is without a doubt one of the two or three most poignant modern novels this reader has ever had the pleasure of encountering...made "Papa Kurt"(Vonnegut) sound tired and blase'. Embued with vivid, striking imagery...plot turns impossible to forsee, yet satisfyingly logical...complex in its multilayerings, but as smooth as a luminous egg...an absolutely staggering ending, very hard to describe. I finished the book feeling awed and humbled. Snippets of dialogue, fantastic scenes, emotional depths, these and more swirled through my mind for weeks afterword. If Lucius Shepard's powers were not yet fully matured when he wrote this, I daresay he may write THE best fantastic story of our generation.

This is Shepard's first book, and he knocks it out of the park. It begins with a fascinating concept: if you can revive the recently dead, for just a few minutes, what will they tell you? What have they seen while dead?

And then, the story takes off in completely unexpected ways, and the book becomes completely unique, spanning genres and confounding expectations.

If you like horror, if you like SF, if you like fantasy, this will fulfill your expectations.

I read this book when it was first published because of a Damon Knight Blurb on the cover: "I wonder if anyone else knows what a good writer Lucius Shepard is?" Being a Damon Knight fan I bought the book on his recommedation. Because of the book I read all of Shepard's books.

Green Eyes was one of those delightful books you find now and then that you read non-stop. It appears to be three novelettes of differing genres put together to make a novel, but woven together with such skill it becomes a whole. Because of the three separate parts to the novel I had no idea where Shepard was going with this story. If you are lucky enough to find a copy of this book I envy your first reading.

I'm only three-quarters of a way through this book but feel compelled to write up a review NOW. Shepard is truly sui generis and simply brilliant. Gorgeous, lusty prose with storytelling that combines elements of science fiction, magical realism, horror, you name it. The man writes like he's on a mission from ANOTHER WORLD. :) BTW, his short stories are incredible as well (he wrote the greatest dragon story and the greatest post-9/11 story IMO). I mentioned him as America's JG Ballard, because Ballard is the only other guy I know who can write such "out there" stuff with such breath-taking grace *and* audacity.

This book's insights into celebrity-hood, religion and mass media mania are unnervingly spot-on and so much more affecting than something like Chuck Palahnuik's "Survivor" which has many of the same elements, but none of the soul and depth. It's the difference between night and day.

Why Shepard hasn't gotten his due is beyond me. Meanwhile, writers that aren't even fit to walk in his shadow are getting oodles of money and fame. HUH?

If you want to get a quick taste of just how "on-fire" his prose can get, pick up a copy at a bookstore or library and flip to page 114 and read that long gleaming riff of a sentence that starts with: "It had nothing to do with Sharon Stone..." haha! YES!

While boring, over-baked "lit" books like Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union are getting lauded to the rafters, the real good stuff always seems to pass under the radar. Seek this one out!

I was first exposed to Lucius Shepard when I heard him give a reading of a chapter from HANDBOOK, then a novel in progress, back in 2003. I was immediately hooked by the chapter's beguiling mixture of the quotidian (an Arizona souvenir shop) and the eerie (a customer who might be a god) and looked forward to the book's publication with great anticipation. Now that I have read it, I can't say that I'm disappointed in the slightest. This is a literary noir thriller of the highest caliber. During the most recent half-decade of his writing career, Lucius has concentrated on novellas and other shorter forms, and his skill for compacting plot is used to great effect in this full-length novel. The book's first thirty pages include enough incident and conflict to fuel an entire novel, and he's just getting started. His characterizations are full-bodied and introduce you to people you'll feel you've known through a long, fulfilling relationship by the time you reach the book's final pages. Lucius's settings, from smalltown Arizona to the Mexican border to the Chilean coast, are vivid and linger in the mind. His prose is rich and serves a cultural satire that never comes across as tiresome or preachy. But best of all, these virtues, enough by themselves to propel another book to the top of many "Ten Best" lists, are harnessed to a plot that grabs you by the throat and never lets go. Here's a book that's not only good for you, but which tastes good, too. After slogging through many highly-praised novels in recent years which sorely (and often successfully) tempted me to put them aside, the fact that this book, a work of high literary quality and ambition, could be so damn entertaining was a very, very welcome gift from the reading gods.

Though I was reminded of both Nabokov's understated humor and Robert Bly's free verse in reading "Handbook of American Prayer," ultimately the book's a satisfying fantasy-genre read, comprising the pleasures of good noir, urban fantasy, and magic realism without neatly fitting any of those categories. "Handbook" doesn't really satirize the TV religion or Hollywood celebrities it involves. Given Shepard's propensity for full-scale attack on media icons, he's surprisingly restrained (though one popular film critic gets a good raking-over). The media trappings merely support the book's exploration of imprisonment -- how the narrator, lacking purpose in his life, falls into jail, goes through a hero's journey to find and exploit the magic that helps him survive it and prosper on the outside, and then extricates himself from that magic to win some psychological freedom. It's a lengthier treatment of the theme Shepard explored so well in the excellent novella "Jailwise" but arrives at a different, more optimistic conclusion, both figuratively and plotwise. Shepard employs a lot of his usual tropes -- altered states of consciousness, obsessive love, seedy locales -- but the narrator follows a different character arc than his usual protagonist, finding his way through an exercise of self-determination and loyalty that his characters usually can't manage, due to their natures or circumstances. "Handbook" is a smooth, coherent, satisfying read, consistently interesting and exciting.

My one year old loves this book (and the one on Piglet and Pooh). Very cute.

This book is one of our favorites. My 9 month old son loves it. The soft cover is very appealing to babies and the classic illustrations are fun to look at. It has a quick entertaining format. Hello Tigger! always brings a smile to our faces when we read.

My 8 month old loves this book. Her face lit up when she first saw and touched it, and she still loves to look at the pages and explore the soft cover.

I like it better than her other board books because she's less likely to bonk herself in the head painfully with this one.

It's basically a compilation of (color) pictures which feature Tigger from House At Pooh Corner, with simple captions. Since I love A. A. Milne, this is a great substitute until my daughter's old enough to listen to the real Pooh books.

Also a good deal at this price - well-constructed.

This is a wonderful recording of the Pooh tales...Mr. Dennis makes the tales come alive. These are familiar friends and the rendering of this collection is excellent. Mr. Dennis provides all the voices and the stories are read as Mr. Milne wrote them...as stories, for children, to be read aloud.

Peter Dennis does not so much perform the writings of A. A. Milne, as he is possessed by each and every inhabitant of the Hundred Acre Woods. Like a spiritual medium, Mr. Dennis seems to directly channel Pooh and Piglet, Owl and Eeyore, Tigger and Christopher Robin. To hear him conduct his magic on tape, one presupposes that he must have recorded each voice in successive takes, but to see him perform, is to watch a man's entire demeanor change as quickly as the sunshine can burst out from behind a cloud, and to realize, contentedly, that beautifully written words can be lifted straight off the page and can dance before your very eyes, in the hands of a gifted performer.

CLASSIC POOH

The real Winnie-the-Pooh has finally stood up. Kids inundated with movies and merchandise featuring Disney's version of the Bear of Little Brain deserve to be introduced to the real thing: English actor Peter Dennis' telling of A. A. Milne's tales.

Dennis, who lives in Southern California, is the only person granted permission by the Pooh Trustees to perform Milne's stories and poems in the theater, and his one-man show Bother! has won many awards. He's now released a Classic Audio CD Collection of his unabridged, award-winning recordings of Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, Now We Are Six and When We Were Very Young. KAREN LINDELL, PARENTING MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER, 1998

Not for the faint of the heart. The last ten pages are especially hard to read. Brings together many different totalitarian societies into one, making it recognizable but not dated. Makes a really good book for class discussions.

Jim Shepard creates a believable state recently taken over by a violent totalitarian regime. The state could be just about anywhere, and sounds Mediterranean or perhaps Middle Eastern. It contains elements of all of the worst paranoid dictatorships of recent history, Communist purges, Fascist tortures, Nazi destructiveness, fundamentalist repeals of freedom. Add to this mix 15-year old Karel Roeder who lives with his unemployed and distant father.

Karel could be a lot of 15-year olds in any culture, still a child, seeking comfort and stability he's not frequently known, trying to be a man, trying to figure out his place in the world and his society. His interests are mainly the reptiles in the zoo where he is apprenticed to herpatologist Albert, and his childhood family friend and budding anti-regime activist Leda, on whom he is developing a serious crush.

This tale follows Karel through the losses and destruction of the few things important to him. Very descriptive, a well told story, frightening in its starkness. Hints of the film "Brazil".

This novel is set in a fictional police state- a sort of Austro-Hungary in the tropics. It follows a lead character's brush with the authorities, and a deepening entanglement with the opposition. There isn't a "Hollywood" ending, which is also refreshing.